Security contractor with Gaddafi ties grilled over links to SNC-Lavalin

The Ontario private security contractor who helped dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s family flee Libya during last year’s revolution was grilled by Canadian immigration officials Tuesday about his ties to SNC-Lavalin

The Ontario private security contractor who helped dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s family flee Libya during last year’s revolution was grilled by Canadian immigration officials Tuesday about his ties to SNC-Lavalin.

Gary Peters spent almost five hours at the Canada Border Services Agency offices in Mississauga, Ont., where he was questioned about the Montreal-based engineering giant’s role in financing some of his international travels.

Asked what the CBSA officers wanted to know about SNC-Lavalin, Mr. Peters replied: “What trips they paid for, how much they paid, who paid, who was the contact. That’s what they were asking about that. How I got paid.”

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SNC-Lavalin announced earlier on Tuesday it had launched an independent investigation into $35-million worth of improperly documented payments related to construction projects “and certain other contracts” in the last quarter of 2011.

The payments “were documented to construction projects to which they did not relate,” the company said in a news release. SNC-Lavalin lost 20% of its market value in a single trading session on Tuesday.

News of the audit came almost three weeks after SNC-Lavalin announced the departure of executive vice-president Riadh Ben Aissa, who oversaw the company’s Libyan operations, and his accountant, Stéphane Roy. Mr. Ben Aissa declined to comment on the audit.

Canada’s largest engineering firm, SNC-Lavalin has been under scrutiny over its Libyan operations since last fall, when the National Post reported the company had financed a fact-finding trip to Tripoli in July 2011 that resulted in a pro-Gaddafi regime report that was sent to Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs.

SNC-Lavalin had nurtured close ties with the Gaddafi family, spending more than $2-million to host Col. Gaddafi’s son, Saadi, when he visited Canada in 2008. Insiders said the expenses included cases of Champagne, a moose hunt and a private security team headed by Mr. Peters.

The company garnered contracts in Libya worth hundreds of millions of dollars, such as a prison and an airport. But when the Arab Spring spread to Libya last February, the company had to withdraw its staff amid escalating violence. NATO participated in the conflict by launching air strikes against pro-Gaddafi’s forces.

During the civil war, SNC-Lavalin contracted Cynthya Vanier, a mediator from Mount Forest Ont., who specializes in First Nations disputes, to fly to Libya to conduct a fact-finding mission to assess the country’s security situation. Mr. Peters accompanied her to provide security.

After submitting a report that accused NATO and Libyan rebels of war crimes, Mr. Vanier travelled to Mexico, where she and three others were arrested for allegedly plotting to smuggle Saadi Gaddafi and his family to a Mexican hideaway on false passports. She has denied the charges and has not gone to trial.

SNC-Lavalin has acknowledged that Mr. Roy travelled to Mexico City to meet Ms. Vanier in November and was present when one of her alleged accomplices was arrested. But the company has denied any involvement in the purported smuggling plot.

The CBSA is also now investigating Mr. Peters, an Australian who has lived in Canada for about a decade. The probe is to determine whether he was involved in activities that make him inadmissible to Canada and, therefore, subject to deportation.

During a break in the questioning Tuesday, Mr. Peters said the CBSA officers had warned him that if they concluded he was involved in terrorism or security threats to Canada, he could be subject to a deportation order.

“I’ve just got to wait and see,” said Mr. Peters, president of Can/Aust Security and Investigations International Inc., headquartered in Cambridge, Ont. “I’ve done nothing wrong. It all depends on how they interpret my activities.”

He said the CBSA officers asked him who had paid for the July trip to Libya with Ms. Vanier. He said SNC-Lavalin had paid. They also wanted to know who had paid for his last trip to Libya in August, when he helped Saadi Gaddafi flee to Niger in a convoy.

Mr. Peters said SNC-Lavalin had not paid for that trip. But he said when the convoy was ambushed after delivering Mr. Gaddafi to Niger, he was shot and Mr. Ben Aissa had paid for his fight back to Canada.

“I had to come back early. Ben Aissa paid for the return flight,” he said.

Mr. Ben Aissa has said through his spokesman, Frédéric Lepage, that he was “never aware of, nor did he ever provide any mandate to anyone at any time in relation with the movement of the members of the Gaddafi family to Mexico or to anywhere else in the world.”

The CBSA officers also questioned Mr. Peters about five Libyans killed in return fire after ambushing his convoy. “They were grilling me over that — who did this, who did that, did they live, did they not live, whatever, how did it happen,” he said. “I told them they didn’t live.”

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